The fabled Steam Box has an official announcement and release date. Following up their unveiling of SteamOS, today Valve has followed up with information on the Steam Machine, a box running SteamOS designed for gaming in the living room.
The Machine will shortly be entering beta, where Valve will give out 300 units for lucky Steam users to test. Currently over 3,000 Steam games run on the Steam Machine, some running natively with others available via streaming. The Steam Machine will see an official release early in 2014, will have multiple models from multiple manufacturers, and be fully modable just like any other computer.
Valve is quick to point out that the Steam Machine will not be the only way to access Steam going forward. If people are happy with their current Steam setup, the Steam Machine won’t change anything.